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Play This: ‘Bravely Default’ is the 3DS RPG every ‘Final Fantasy’ fan wanted

Note: This post is being written after spending about 15 hours with the US version of Bravely Default. I have not yet come close to finishing the story, but wanted to share my impressions before the North American release.

The Final Fantasy series is not what it used to be. Many modern Japanese RPGs in general, in fact, have strayed far from the SNES games of old that many of us fell in love with. As consoles got more powerful and budgets got bigger, games became more about bombast and less about magic.

Bravely Default: Flying Fairy for the Nintendo 3DS manages to not only to harken back to the “good ‘ole days” of RPGs, but also advance the genre is some clever and much-needed ways. It evokes all the right emotions of a classic JRPG while cleverly avoiding many of the frustrations. If you were a fan of the genre in its early days, Bravely Default is what you’ve probably been yearning for these past several years.

It’s a relatively simple (though not uneventful) story starring a small cast of four heroes — Tiz, Agnes, Ringabell and Edea — on a journey to save four crystals and pierce darkness with light. Along the way they will ride an airship, use Phoenix Downs, cast Cura and summon creatures to aid them in battle. This is as Final Fantasy as you can possibly get, in all the best ways possible. It’s much better looking than any SNES RPG would have been capably of, though, sporting fantastic landscapes and interesting scenery to explore.

Like the older Final Fantasy entries and games like them, battles in Bravely Default are random — with a catch. One of the game’s best features allows you to set the frequency with which you encounter random battles, with no punishment or reward either way. It’s a common occurrence in a JRPG to reach a level of annoyance with random battles in a given location. Once you’re leveled up to a point where battles are both easy and practically worthless in terms of their rewards (EXP and gold, mostly), every fight is met with an exasperated sigh. So Bravely Default simply lets you turn battles off on the fly. When you get to the next area, you can turn them back on at 50, 100, 150 or even 200 percent frequency (good for when you really need to grind). The feature is buried under a few too many menus to make it as convenient as I’d like, but it’s still a godsend in most cases.

When you are in battle, things are turn-based. Select a move or ability for each character and watch them fight monsters. Fairly standard fare. Characters use actions with Battle Points (BP), and each character generally gets one point per turn — therefore, one move per turn. Bravely Default lends its name, however, to two of its more unique battle options: Brave and Default. Brave allows a character to use more than one BP at a time to perform up to four actions in one turn. Characters can even “borrow” BP in order to essentially take several turns in advance, making it possible to defeat some enemies four times as fast. Default, on the other hand, basically allows a character to skip their turn and bank the BP for later use (it also works the same way a “Defend” command would work in other RPGs). Smart management of both Brave and Default can make the difference in a lot of battles.

There is also a job system in place that oldschool Final Fantasy fans will likely compare to that of Final Fantasy V. Each character can be assigned different jobs that they level independently of their character level — so Tiz, at Level 12, could be a Level 3 Black Mage. Mixing and matching abilities you learn through jobs is essential to character development, and it makes leveling up a more active process than it might be otherwise.

If you have friends playing Bravely Default, you can help each other by sending each other moves to use in battle and by sharing (to a point) job abilities you have learned. If a friend has focused on leveling up the Thief job, for example, your own Thief characters can use abilities that would otherwise be out of their reach. It’s a small thing that’s not required, but it can be useful. Somewhat more useful is the help friends can offer in the rebuilding of Norende, a town that, when repaired, offers useful and exclusive items and equipment for purchase from traders. More friends means more villagers with which to rebuild, which means less time needed to reap the rewards.

From the very beginning, Bravely Default had me hooked. I count Final Fantasy VI among my favorite games of all time, and RPGs that even come close to it are too few and far between if you ask me. Bravely Default takes everything I love about the old SNES RPGs I used to love and modernizes them in smart ways that are both conservative and risky. I plan on spending many, many more hours in its world, and I highly recommend fellow JRPG players do the same.

Bravely Default: Flying Fairy was previewed with a 3DS review code provided by Nintendo. It will be released in North America on February 7.

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